Lego - page 3

So the Consumer Electronics Show is over for another year, and for those who’ve been in Las Vegas covering it for us, it’s back to normality. While we allow the Cult of Mac team to sober up, it’s time to look back at the best gizmos CES had to offer. There were thousands of products on show — far too many to cover in one week — but there were a handful that really stood out.

We’ve put together a list of awesome things that we were blown away by, including smartphones, accessories, gadgets, and more. Check it out and tell us what you’re most looking forward to getting your hands on in 2013.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 –

Lego is showing off a new version of its popular Mindstorms robotics kit at CES that adds some incredible new technology. The third generation Lego kit includes support for mobile devices, meaning that you can now control your Lego creations with your iPhone.

As Mindstorms continues to evolve, the technology in them improves as well. The heart of the EV3 is powered by Linux, which allows the creator to program the creation remotely from your iOS device.

Lego plans to make the Mindstorms EV3 available sometime in the second half of 2013, with a retail price of $349.99 It seems like just yesterday that Legos were just plastic bricks…

LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I have an unhealthy love affair with LEGOs. They’re beautiful and fun, but also expensive. Have you seen how much it costs to build a replicate R2D2 and B-Wing fighter to put in your bedroom.

Smallworks isn’t helping me any either. They’re making iPhone cases that let you play with LEGOs right on your iPhone and morph it into any creation you can dream up.

Lego Mindstorms has just evolved. The latest announcement from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from the Denmarased toy company is that their popular robotics hardware and software, Mindstorms, is getting a new command module, the EV3. It will be iOS and Android compatible from the start, letting even more kids and the young at heart program and control their robots from mobile devices.

It doesn’t look like Apple is going to be making its own dock for the iPhone 5 and its new Lightning connector. You could go the third-party route and order something like this unofficial Lightning Dock from TLD, or you could get creative and use Legos.

There’s a 42-peice Lego set available online that’s specifically designed to create a minimalistic dock for the iPhone 5, and it looks awesome.

If you thought your Lego construction skills were formidable, check out what H.K. Leung has built: a Lego replica of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, complete with see-through spiral staircase and glass cube on top. It’s incredible.

There’s making things out of Lego, and then there’s making things out of Lego. And H.Y. Leung’s amazing white Leica M8 is firmly in the latter camp. His replica rangefinder might just be the best Lego fake we’ve ever seen (outside of anything to do with Star Wars, of course).

At the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s cosmic exploration on the evolution of mind in the universe, a bunch of man-apes in Africa discover a mysterious, jet black monolith. Upon touching it, almost worshipfully, they make an evolutionary leap in intelligence and begin to use the bones of animals as clubs to wage war upon competing tribes of apes.

2001’s monolith is iconic, and it’s common to joke about the similarity in shape between Kubrick’s big, ominous slab of intelligence-evolving basalt and Steve Jobs’s iPhone, but man, whoever built this 2001 docking station for his iPhone out of LEGO bricks — complete with tiny LEGO bones and monkeys, with the iPhone standing as the monolith above a worshipful tribe of man apes — just ran with it.

If you love Apple and LEGOs then here’s a project you’ll want to get behind – The Lego Modular  Apple Store. With roughly 800 pieces, the Lego Modular  Apple Store seeks to replicate your shopping experience by helping Lego fans build an Apple Store replete with iPhones, iPads, iPods, MacBooks, iMacs, and even a little Steve Jobs Lego man.

Photo of Zias used with permission

This smiling youngster is Zias Kool, and he’s happy for good reason: as a birthday present, the makers of cult iOS puzzler Edge are going to add his Lego-designed custom level to a future version of the game.

Following the news that Disney is introducing a series of iPad games that interact with physical toys, Lego is also introducing its next generation of games with the “Life of George” iPhone app.

The game consists of classic Lego bricks, a free iPhone app, and a mat that basically acts as a green screen. The player tries to create the image shown on the iPhone app in Legos on the mat before time runs out.

Author, illustrator and photographer Chris McVeigh put together this fantastic Lego iMac using Lego Digital Designer, and has released the digital version so we can all make our own copies.

This Lego-look speaker will pump some sound for the iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Mini. The USB-charged speaker blocks come in red, blue, green, white, black  yellow and pink.
No details on how powerful it is, but probably enough to annoy someone in the next cubicle over.
At around $20, it’s an idea for the random people on your list.

Available at Delight

Last month, the Texas LEGO User Group included a model Apple retail store on main street for the Austin Maker Fair. You can also take a look inside the store, though Lego for Lego, we prefer the interior of this mini Apple store, though the logo roof on the Texas model is pretty sweet.

Via TUAW